At a glance
Stickiness (DAU/MAU) is your daily active users divided by your monthly active users, shown as a gauge. It answers a single sharp question: of everyone who used your store this month, what share showed up on a typical day? A reading of 25% means the average monthly user returns about one day in four. It is the cleanest single proxy for habit. Acquisition and a good month can flatter your MAU, but stickiness cuts through that to show whether people genuinely keep coming back. It is the engagement number worth watching when you want to know if growth is durable.
| What it counts | Daily active users as a share of monthly active users, expressed as a percentage. The proportion of your monthly base that is active on a given day. |
| Sample type | Backend API data from Mixpanel, computed from distinct active users over daily and monthly windows. |
| Why it matters | Stickiness is a habit proxy that resists vanity inflation. Rising stickiness means engagement is deepening; a fall means people are drifting away even if MAU looks flat. |
| Reading the value | Read the gauge as a percentage. Higher is better; the band you should expect depends on your category, but a sustained fall below the alert level is a clear engagement warning. |
| Currency | percent |
| Time window | 30D vsP |
| Alert trigger | <20% |
| Sentiment key | mix_stickiness |
| Roles | owner, marketing |
Calculation
Vortex IQ computes stickiness by dividing Mixpanel’s daily active users by its monthly active users and expressing the result as a percentage. Active users are the distinct users who performed a qualifying event in the window, so DAU is the unique actives on a day and MAU is the unique actives across the trailing 30 days. The ratio is read over the current period and compared against the prior equivalent period so you can see the direction of travel. The alert latches when stickiness falls below the configured floor. Because both numerator and denominator depend on the same definition of an active user, keeping that event definition consistent is what makes the ratio comparable over time.Worked example
A representative reading of Stickiness (DAU/MAU) for a typical merchant on Mixpanel. Imagine your store sees about 8,000 daily active users against a monthly active base of 32,000, giving a stickiness of 25%. After a large paid push on 14 Jun 26 brings in a wave of one-time visitors, MAU swells to 48,000 while DAU only edges up to 8,400. Stickiness falls to roughly 17.5% and crosses the alert floor. The drop does not mean engagement collapsed; it means the new arrivals are not returning. You confirm this against the retention curve for that cohort, which decays fast, and refocus on activation rather than more acquisition. For deeper investigation, use Vortex Mind to trace upstream causes; for natural-language exploration, ask Ask Viq.Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why merchants reach for it |
|---|---|
mix_dau | The numerator of stickiness; check it to see whether a ratio move came from DAU or MAU. |
mix_users | Monthly Active Users, the denominator; a swelling MAU can drag stickiness down on its own. |
mix_events_per_user | Depth of engagement per user, a useful companion to how often they return. |
mix_retention_curve | Shows whether returning behaviour is durable, the behaviour stickiness summarises. |
mix_cohort_retention_d7 | Early retention point that often moves in step with stickiness. |
Reconciling against Mixpanel
Where to look in Mixpanel’s own dashboard: Mixpanel reports stickiness directly in its engagement view, where you can see DAU, WAU, and MAU and the DAU/MAU ratio. Set the qualifying event and date range to match the card and read the daily-over-monthly figure. You can also reproduce it by hand from two Insights reports, one counting unique users per day and one counting unique users over the trailing 30 days. Why the Vortex IQ value may legitimately differ:| Reason | Direction | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Active-user event definition. Which event counts as active changes both DAU and MAU. | Variable | Match the qualifying event Mixpanel uses for active users. |
| MAU inflated by acquisition. A big intake of one-time users raises MAU faster than DAU. | Stickiness reads lower | Read alongside the cohort retention of the new arrivals. |
| Which day’s DAU. A single quiet or busy day shifts the daily figure. | Variable | Compare the trend rather than a single day’s ratio. |